


Begin before this

by wildmachinery



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode Related, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-07-15
Updated: 2005-07-15
Packaged: 2017-10-16 04:28:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/168410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildmachinery/pseuds/wildmachinery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The slow decay.  Post-Ascension.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Begin before this

Sometimes Jack talks about the past.

Well, not _talks_ , really. But sometimes, maybe, he'll say something offhand, about a movie or a mission or that hippie coffee place with the weird Beat poets that Daniel dragged him to once, that Jack would never admit that he actually liked. And Daniel will just look at him with this strange, kind of vacant look in his eyes, like he has no idea what Jack's talking about but doesn't want to disappoint him. And Jack will just drop it, because Daniel doesn't have any idea what he's talking about, because when he came back from the land of the super-smart glowy people, he came back broken, and it hurts Jack like hell to think about it.

He's never quite sure what Daniel will remember and what he won't, and he's pretty much gotten over the testing phase because it's just no fun for either of them. Sometimes he just can't help himself, though. It's that same ground-in masochistic streak that makes him pick relentlessly at half-healed wounds, and keep his old pictures of Charlie and Sarah up on the walls where he has to look at them every day when he walks in the door. It's the same thing that makes him ask, while they're slogging companiably through the undergrowth on PX5-283, and he makes sure to ask it casually, "So, have you seen Boyd around lately? He was asking after you."

Daniel slows down for a second, and blinks thoughtfully, and Jack almost hopes that he'll stop dead, and maybe punch him for it; he almost hopes that he's hurt him. But Daniel just swats at a mosquito that's taken a bite out of him, or at whatever the hell passes for mosquitoes on PX5-who-cares, and continues on. "Nope," he says, and Jack suddenly feels like screaming, because Boyd had been shot in the head on P3X-589, two and a half years ago. A Jaffa staff weapon had taken his head clean off, in front of everyone, with no chance to even recover the body before the rest of them had fallen back through the gate to Earth, and Daniel had kept in touch with his widow and his son religiously, before he'd gone. "You should tell him to stop by my office, if you see him again before I do."

Jack bites his tongue, something sinking hopelessly in his chest, and follows him.

**Author's Note:**

> For 15minuteficlets at livejournal. The word was "vacant".


End file.
